Los Angeles Art Association proudly presents Simulacrum, an all-media group exhibition exploring superficial likeness or image in contemporary culture juried by Bennett Roberts of Roberts & Tilton and opening at Gallery 825 on June 23, 2012. In addition to Simulacrum, artists Brian Mallman, Peta Orbach and Valerie Wilcox will be featured in solo exhibitions.

Brian Mallman's new series of drawings A bit too quiet are inspired by questions about how much responsibility those who enjoy freedom of speech have to those who are not equally free, and the special role that artists play in this conversation. Mallman addresses these issues through a series of figurative drawings. The artist uses gestural lines to represent the fear that causes people to refrain from speaking out, whether such fear is self-imposed or due to an outside force. Mallman's work elicits a simple question: As free people, are we doing enough?

Peta Orbach's paintings ALTER EGOS explore the appropriation of animals as secret identities or alter egos. Orbach's animals are icons stripped of their individuality and imbued with a visceral energy that transforms difficult and overwhelming human emotions into archetypes. Influenced by African masks and sculpture, Orbach's animals are used in the traditions of native peoples to tell stories. The animals in these paintings are anthropomorphic and each animal has a story to tell.

Valerie Wilcox's latest body of work, Marks in Motion blurs the line between drawing and sculpture and takes the viewer on a spontaneous journey through line, light and space. In the installation, each individual "mark" (or piece) communicates its distinctive gestural energy which gives it a unique life of its own. These marks play inventively with their own shadows which, when cast upon the wall, become two-dimensional representations of the original drawings. Together, all these elements become a collective force, suggesting a group migration that twists, turns, curls and bends in and around the space, engaging you in a whimsical, yet refined excursion to an unknown destination.